Munda Biddi - Northcliffe to Pemberton

Today we had relative easy day of riding, which was welcome after the last few long ones we've just had. It took us through shaded forest trails , we had plenty of stops to allow us to appreciate what was around us.
  • Distance travelled = 48 km
  • Temperature 13 to 28. Humid at times. No rain until the evening and fairly calm.
  • refer to map 6 Munda Biddi trail map Manjinup to Northcliffe.

A lot of the trails were reclaimed from timber rails so were relatively flat and straight. The sleepers were left behind created a mild wave of rhythmic motions transmitted through the bike as we rode. There was evidence of logging, with the remnants of platforms built to assist loading the logs onto the rail carts .

In the seemingly endless grey-brown and grey-green there is plenty of variety to be found, Take for instance the fungi.  Fungi small and large from white to bright orange, growing out of fallen logs and through the leaf litter. Care to look and see there is plenty to keep one interested.

Farmers like to leave old machinery at their entrance. Indeed, we saw an advertisement in town requesting an old rusted tractor for that specific purpose.
Also, along the track we would find the odd clumps of blackberry. The odd one would have some nice berries for us to feast on. 
We had a nice lunch stop by an old trestle bridge.
Some fallen trees were a bit much to ride over.

The ride up to Pemberton was a lot of fun. It was comprised of a lot of switchbacks, which on first glance at the map was rather intimidating. The designers of the track did very well by combining the rises with some hills to allow you to accelerate to the next rise. I was switching quickly between high and low range on the front sprockets and went up very quickly. Lots of fun, pouring with sweat at the top.

At the top of this trail was the famous Gloucester fire tree. I promptly had to climb it, and got a 1/3 of the way when I decided to come down. Not because of fear (though it's intimidating rising 72 metres), but because my hands and body were dripping with sweat.  I thought it was not safe to carry on until I dried out a bit. 

About 1/2 an hour later, Nev decided she would have a go and went all the way to the top. Due to the lateness of the hour, we unfortunately had to leave, so I decided to come back tomorrow to give it another go.

There were lots of beautiful, tame parrots at the park, they will climb on hands and shoulders with encouragement, though it's frowned upon for people to feed them. The green ones called the twenty-eight parrot (Australian Ringneck) and the red one is the Western Rosella.

We had to get to a bike shop so that Nev and Ed could get their brakes attended to. The person who normally services the bikes was out riding or something, so we had to wait until later. This shop was also the one that hired the bikes to the German tourists we saw earlier in the week at Walpole. It did not carry much in the way of parts stock.
The accommodation: a bit of a story here. We had a meeting a few weeks prior to leaving and decided that it was not peak season and there was relatively plenty of accommodation so we elected to keep it flexible and not book anything. A call in the last week to the backpackers, and I discover it was full. further calls and just about the whole town was booked up. It turns out that there was a triathlon organised for that weekend. Lesson learned: book your accommodation !
Anyway, I rang around and reviewed the accommodation sites of Wotif, Stayz etc and found a farmhouse chalet. If all of us stayed together it worked out to be $115 per person for two nights. Well, we were blown away with this place, it was not too far out of town, it had 4 bedrooms, loads of beds, dishwasher, microwave, oven, washing machine, bbq. Open plan style, cottage made of rammed earth.

Tonight we had a baked dinner with lamb roast, roast vegetables, cheese sauce and gravy and some nice wine to wash it down.

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